I have tried to be polite, and I have failed. I have decided that I will talk to you in the only language you understand, rants. This is a difficult process for me, because I’ve been taught to hold back on the sheer amount of concentrated rage I can express, so that I don’t offend, or more importantly frighten, the people around me. Well to be quite frank, I have been offended, day in and day out by you. So because we are all one big happy poetry community, I am going to bring up some of my problems with you.

1) YOU ARE NOT CUTTING EDGE!

I have heard you call yourselves cutting edge. This is a bold-faced lie. The KW Poetry Slam is about as cutting edge as Justin Bieber. The only real difference you have from Justin Bieber is that you are working in a genre that wants to be popular, but isn’t. Sure, Slam Poetry is better known then the academic branches (whatever those are), but at the end of the day you are still the popular form of the left-wing, and you are still pandering to your audience.

Let me make this clear. Women have been writing about how their vaginas are beautiful vortexes of creation since the 1960s. It has been close to fifty years now. It is no longer cutting edge. It is cliché. The Poetry Slam has been around for almost thirty years, it is not longer the new form, it is the establishment. Every Slam Poet writes about some cause. Heck, I’ve written about police brutality. I have yet to see anything at the KW Poetry Slam that is something I would describe as new.

You want to write about being a feminist, that’s fine, just don’t call yourself cutting edge unless you are.

Actually, what would make a poem cutting edge anyways? That it is faster than previous generations of poems? That it’s not only a poem, but a camera and a butter knife and what have you?

2) FUCK COMMUNITY

This connects to my accusations that you are pandering to the audience. I hear a lot about community at the KW Poetry Slam. I hear a lot about community in the Poetry Slam world in general. You know who else has community? INBREED CANNIBAL HILLBILLYS!

Actually, that’s not a bad way of describing the poetry slam. Controversy to sampling aside, poems have been known to be recursive for years, centuries even. I’m not holding cannibalism against the Poetry Slam in general. It’s the incestuous hillbilly thing that bothers me. You average Poetry Slam usually has the same few people, and eventually rules start developing. You expect certain things. You start so what anytime someone says Marc Smith. Why do you do that? Really, has anyone ever explained why this happens?

Anyways, my point is that the KW Poetry Slam has itself up so that a certain kind of poetry keeps up. It’s not that Kitchener-Waterloo only has poets from this kind of area, it’s just that the KW Poetry Slam attracts the same kind of poet. And they all do the same kind of poem. The “I am a beautiful snowflake and I am going to tell you about all the horrible things those rich white men do, but don’t worry because we have the power to change the world,” poem. Seriously, that is the only poem I hear from you. Could it kill you to write something that has nothing to do with that, and maybe, I don’t know, grow as an artist?

3) SOCIAL COMMENTARY ALONE DOES NOT ART MAKE!

I’m not saying art isn’t about social commentary, I believe that is one of art’s functions. My problem is that you are only social commentary, AND IT IS GETTING ANNOYING.

“Oh, Dylan, you can’t say that,” says the Slam Poet. “You’re just ignoring the fact that our society perpetuates rape, and Stephen Harper is destroying our country, and that Israel is setting up a Holocaust in Palestine. You just don’t have a social consciousness, like we do. Don’t you care about saving the world?”

You know what Slam Poet? No, I don’t care about saving the world. Fuck saving the world. I am so sick of you going on about saving the fucking world. You only talk about saving the world. I am at this point ready to say fuck the world, let’s end it now and put it out of it’s fucking misery because I am sick of you saying that I need too.

“But Dylan, art can be a powerful force of social change,” the Slam Poet says.

No, art is not a force for social change. Art is a byproduct of social change. Was Hitler suddenly defeated by a play? Did Pol Pot suddenly decide not to commit genocide when he heard a poem about how bad killing people is? Among all the poems, all the songs, all the books and movies made about George W. Bush’s grand eight year fuck up, did he show any sign of stopping? At this point, your only hope of poetry having any social change, is that the wind caries your piss in the general direction of whoever it is you are complaining about.

Again, I want to reiterate that good art can, and does, discuss political issues. There is a difference between a work that addresses social issues, and examines its effects on human beings within a society, and a piece that just talks about them. There is a difference between saying “The War on Drugs has a negative effect upon society,” and “The Wire.” There is a difference between saying “Good art cannot flourish under a totalitarian state,” and “The Master and Margarita.” There is a difference to saying “Since 1993, there have been 5000 unanswered deaths of female factory workers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico,” and “2666.” These works show fully realized human beings, humans with strengths, desires and flaws. Human beings who are not mouth pieces for the author to go off on whatever rant he feels like. These are what I like to experience as a reader and viewer. I’m not asking you to give the next Great Canadian Novel, but you could at least seek to try giving us something human instead of talking about what affects humans.

4) I DON’T NEED TO BE ANY GOOD AT POETRY, BECAUSE THIS IS A POETRY SLAM

I have gotten this response from a prominent member of the KW Poetry Slam. I will spare her the indignity of saying the name of this individual, but this quote has stayed with me. This is probably the most disturbing, offensive thing I have ever heard at a poetry slam. Talking about rape and genocide is expected, but this is something that I find disturbing on several levels.

I admit, I am not the best poet. I am not very strong at metre, and I write very infrequently. I do like to put effort into my pieces. If you have heard some of my poems, then you should know that the next time I perform them they will be different. In fact, I was thinking of reworking a few of them to have stronger mnemonic devices so I can more easily perform them without a page. And the Poetry Slam is a very seat of the pants type of poetry. But there is still that one line, that you don’t really have to care about poetry. You just want a creative (I use the term loosely) way to bring up social critique. Ultimately, you don’t change, and without change, you can’t have good art.

It may seem foolish, but I expect the standard of art I hear to be of the same standard as the guy who does my plumbing. My father always told me that you should put your best into whatever it is you do, even if it is something you hate. Well God help me, I love poetry. Can you blame me for wanting to put in a little extra effort? And can you blame me, for being offended when people take a thing I love and treat it shabbily, as if poetry was just a prop in their trunk of polemics?

So to wrap this up KW Poetry Slam, shut the fuck up and look at yourselves. Really look at yourselves. You are not as deep as you think you are. You are not as good as you think you are. You are not the avant-garde, you are not the new face of poetry. I am even going to say that you are not horrible. You are not offensive enough to be horrible. You are just average, and in the end that is a bigger sin then being horrible.

ADDENDUM: When I wrote this I was tired and angry at things beyond my control. If I have offended you, I am sorry, but I stand by my basic point. The KW Poetry Slam has become a recepticle of all the faults of the Poetry Slam form, and has become dry, unchallenging, and boring. It is ultimately inevitable that the Slam would become an institution, and with it loose much of it’s vitality. In the name of good art, it is time for us to seriously consider an alternative.

So with the Ontario International Poetry Slam coming up, I thought it would be a good thing to remind you guys that I am in it. Half of you probably came to this blog because my profile links to here. Anyways, I thought that looking at my competition would be appropriate since the bouts have been put up. So here it is, my competition for the Fourth Bout of the Ontario International Poetry Slam.

Dan (AKA Dan Murrey, AKA Dan) – Burlington, ON. CA

Dan Murray is a two-time member of the Burlington Slam Project team. Having graced both Canadian and US national competitions, he is most easily identified by a vast and commanding stage presence. His writing often attempts to connect author to audience through shared experience, in the hopes that we may better ourselves by helping and guiding one another.

Short description: this guy understands Slam Poetry.

Long description: The Slam Poem serves a sort of news function in our culture. Like the folk song or the rap it gives the common people a form to express a news bias that they can’t get in the controlled media of the hegemony that is our current society.

Observe his poem Damages. Now on the one hand, this is a pretty standard slam poem, your basic “I am X,” poem that you usually see in the poetry slam. Personally, I have a bit of a problem with the whole “this is a poem about my identity,” style, but hey I’m white and have nothing but my Aspergers Syndrome to go back on to say I’m not privileged and really white people complaining about lack of privilege sounds a bit silly, to put it lightly. Anyways, Dan talks about being a depressive, and for some reason I like this poem. I think it’s how he is able to go right into the pain of being a depressive. As someone with Aspergers Syndrome I’m also familiar with my psychological diagnosis being a fashion statement. As such, I am going to place him as my main competition. He has a very clear understanding of what slam poetry is.

Lex Leosis – Sherbroke, QC, CA

Lex Leosis is a Toronto born spoken word/rap artist who currently resides in the Eastern Townships. She is a participant in the Canadian Hip Hop community through dance, rap and spoken word. She is a member of the Messengers, competed in Brave New Voice, Rustbelt and was on the 1st Toronto Youth Spoken Word Team.

She raps. I’m not really familiar with rap, so I can’t really make much from this. I only found one thing from her that was spoken word, but the line between hip-hop and slam poetry can be pretty thin. I also am going to say that I respect hip-hop for its orality and use of language.

Again, I’m getting the angry vibe from her. If I’m supposed to take the biographic topics as hers, which is usually the case in spoken word, then she has grown up on some pretty hard streets. As such, I’m going to give her full points for honesty. She’s also really good at rap, which serves her well in the one spoken word post, “I’m Not Gonna Lie.” It has more of the confessional edge of Slam Poetry, and after listening to her Looking at her, I think she may be the best poet I’m going up against, and she hits that sweet spot of poetry and hip-hop which is what the poetry slam is good at hosting. Here’s a link to her soundcloud.

An Orphans Inventory

RN Wagner aka AnOrphansInventory, is a spoken word poet/singer-songwriter/hip-hop artist/community organizer/all ages arts ambassador/film-maker/photographer and HUEman. Through his various means of expression and character, he takes you on a vivid emotional burst of thoughts and imagery, that streams one personal-political hardship after another.

Another rapper. He has a Myspace page. He’s also angry. Not sure what I know about this guy from his poetry, except that he, like most slam poets, is an activist. I’m trying not to be judgemental about this, but honestly I have seen his stuff before. I am not familiar with his poetry, but I have heard this poem before. He is pretty good at rapping though, and I think you should all go to his Myspace and check out his…what’s the term, phat beats? That may be out of date. Either way, the first track “A Letter 2 Forget her, Feat Robert Keyes,” is something to listent to.

Emilee – Toronto, On, CA

Emilee likes to think of herself as both a performance and creative artist. She sings in both showers and stages alike. She is a poet who teaches dance, serves tea, acts in musicals, does crafts, and works on getting a strong back. She is big, but she is also little.

I have no idea what she’s doing. All I know for sure is that she was in a production of Godspell. Her last name is Nimetz by the way.

Jesse Parent – Cottonnwood, UT, USA

Jesse Parent placed 2nd at both the 2010 and 2011 Individual World Poetry Slams and was part of the 8th place Salt City Slam team at the 2011 National Poetry Slam. He has been on the 2007-2011 Salt City Slam teams, has served as SlamMaster and coach for Salt City Slam, and has served on the executive council for Poetry Slam, Inc.

At only 21 years old, G Yamazawa is widely considered one of the top young poets in the country. Born in Durham, NC and raised in a Buddhist household, G is a two-time Southern Fried Champ, NPS finalist, IWPS finalist, and has taken his art to venues across the nation. His favourite food is fried chicken, and he hates sushi.

Oh my God, you guys. He’s got a letter for a name.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Dylan you paranoid bastard. How can you be threatened by a guy with a letter for a name. It’s not even a particularly threatening letter. Like X. Or Z?” Because if I have learned anything from pop culture, people with letters for names are not to be fucked with. They’re usually loners with strange powers and maybe even a little bit insane. V. L. Q. Mister E…Okay, that’s all I can think of, but my point remains. Guy has a letter for a name, he can probably kill me with his mind.

Is he a good poet though? Well, He’s part of the talking-really-fast-I-learned-poetry-on-the-street style of poetry. Not really a fan, and the poem I am listening to now is kind of hard to understand, but it is tending towards some stuff you usually here. Again, it’s based on his personal experience, which I suppose is alright but I’m personally a bit tired of how much the persona of the poet is what we get at poetry slams.

Dylan Tern – Waterloo, ON, CA

By day Dylan Tern studies English Literature at the University of Waterloo and volunteers at the New Quarterly. By night he is a prominent figure at the Fully Eclectic Open Jam. Diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome at age nine, Dylan’s poetry gives a symbolic journey into the experience of life with autism. http://www.dylantern.wordpress.com

This guy doesn’t have much of an internet presence, beside a blog he barely updates and some YouTube videos. He has a nebulous amount of faith in his own strengths as a poet, and seems to prefer a dark material ranging from being deeply aware of the violence, the failure of communication, and a Zappaesque style of outrageous humour that could have been taken by a comedian in Weimar Germany. Despite this, there are elements of a Blakean yearning, especially in poems such as “Dionysian Hymn I,” which has an erotic, albeit naive, take on spiritual apotheosis, the sort of thing a teenager might write after reading half a book on Tantra. I’m not really sure he’s a slam poet per say, his poetry seems to veer from the usual subjects and styles. His work is pretty good, but I don’t really see him as someone I will need to consider much in the competition.

Kevin Burke – Austin, TX, USA

A native of Chicago’s Southland, Kevin’s first time on the spoken word stage was three years ago in Austin, TX. His honesty on stage and voice rooted in hip-hop rhythm and punk-rock passion have earned him the titles of 2011 Austin Poetry Slam Champion, 2011 Texas Grand Slam Champion, 2011 Southwest Shootout Individual Champion, and 2012 Austin Poetry Slam Team.

I’m getting the more emotional, confessional, personal poetry slam vibe from him. He does have the more political stuff, and maybe I’m just getting tired of the political stuff and latching onto what have you, but he concentrates on a more emotional aspect of slam poetry.

YbsFrack – Guelph, ON, CA

Rafay Ansari is a 21 year old poet and hiphop artist, hailing from Windsor, Ontario and currently residing in Guelph. In his writings, he touches upon his personal views of reality, world issues, spirituality and social “norms”. His adoration of life and love of learning is uniquely resonant in all of his work.

So there are three things about this guy. First, he’s a rapper. Second, he’s a Muslim. Third, he’s a 9/11 Truther. I’ve already said I don’t trust my knowledge of rap, and I’ve discussed rap a lot so far, so I’ll just go into the Truther and Muslim aspects.

So I’m going to have to talk about 9/11 Truth theories, because he is a Truther. Observe this poem “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! Muslim’s are NOT terrorists!“. Basically the title tells you all you need to know, he’s a Muslim, he doesn’t like how Muslims have been treated since 9/11, he’s not happy about the official story about 9/11. I’m not sure about 9/11 Truthers, I’m not saying who did what, but even without the Americans or whoever launching an attack on their own people to drag them into a war in the Middle East, the US Government has a lot of blood on their hands. There is also something about a Muslim talking about Tower Seven that makes me a bit happy.

There is also the fact he is a Muslim, and let me tell you he is pretty strong with being a Muslim. He talks about being a Muslim, he has a sort of missionary vibe going on in some of his pieces. He kind of reminds me of the Muslim Youth group at my campus who hold big exhibitions on Islam and hand out fliers and copies of the Quran.

Final Review

I may not have given the poets here the time they deserve. To be frank, I am a bit tired of working on this piece for more than a week, and I want it out. I hope my fellow poets are not offended if you feel I gave you short shift.

Yes, that’s right. I, Dylan Tern will be performing in a poetry slam with poets across the continent. So you all go to the website and buy yourself an all-access ticket, because beside me there are poets with actual presence and clout in the slam poetry world. Poets like Brian Omni Dillon, Kait Rokowski and Lauren Zuniga. It should be an exciting day of poetry.

Among my classes this fall term is “Seventeenth Century Literature, Part One.” I hate this class. I hate the poems of this period. I hate how self-righteously clever they are. I hate how they are all want to impress an overblown aristocratic society. I hate the fact I need to go traipsing through the Internet on some scavenger-hunt to look for examples of “print culture” in the year 1617. It is an entirely toothless period, made up of miniature harpsichords played by pugs and Pomeranians in small tuxedos that are ostentatiously “whimsical” and meant to evoke a sort of “aww. Isn’t it clever we can get a small dog to play chopsticks.”

I will give the seventeenth century this though, it knows how to use metaphor. Metaphor is the main feature of this period, and they do it very well. The problem is I don’t know how to feel about that, since their reliance of metaphor may in fact be part of the reason I find this period so self-righteously clever. I feel poetry should not be direct, and the majority of poets in my community suffer from a naked obviousness that I believe really causes their poetry to suffer in quality. I bring this up to give the poets of the first part of the Seventeenth Century the credit they deserve, they may not be my thing but I do have to admit I appreciate their skill at metaphor.

My other classes are pretty good. My favourite is probably a mix between the comparative lit one, which concentrates on “The Damned Hero,” and the Honours English Studies, which is basically about the Odysseus tradition. Both of these classes involve me reading books I have been meaning to get to but would probably not have gotten into on my own. Homer’s Odyssey is the most obvious, but I’m also reading Goethe’s Faust, which I must say is one of the best things I have been forced to read at University. I am seriously considering learning German just so I can read this in its original language.

I’m also taking a course on German Popular Culture for my language marks. It’s an all right course, and I get on with the professor. It’s turning out to be one of those lecture courses I end up in. Most of my classes are usually in small rooms of between ten and twenty people. German Popular Culture has probably fifty people. This is by no means the largest class I’ve ever been in, the ill-fated Intro to Psychology class would take that dubious honour, but it is my largest this term. It’s still fun, probably the best large class I’ve ever taken.

Anyone following the career of Noam Chomsky is soon confronted with a problem. In fact, it has become known as the “Chomsky problem”. Chomsky has achieved eminence in two very different fields, theoretical linguistics and political commentary. The “Chomsky problem” is that his approaches to these fields appear to contradict each other. In politics Chomsky is a radical, but in linguistics he takes positions that can easily be characterized as reactionary. He treats linguistics as a branch of biology. He traces language to a “Universal Grammar” resident in the physical brain. He believes that our linguistic nature is hard-wired into our genes. Because they diminish the influence of environment on human behaviour, such claims can be used to suggest that certain modes of social organization are natural and immutable. As a result, they have often been associated with conservative politics.

Chomsky himself professes to see no problem. He believes that linguistics is a natural science, and research in the natural sciences must be objective and based on the evidence alone. Indeed, part of the researcher’s job is to divest himself of his cultural and political prejudices before entering the laboratory. These methodological principles were established by the seventeenth-century scientific revolution of Newton and the Royal Society, which was in Chomsky’s view a progressive development and an immeasurable boon to humanity. He sees no reason why the methods of the natural sciences should not be applied to the study of the human mind.

His critics caution that empirical science is closely linked, certainly historically and perhaps conceptually, to capitalist political economy. These discourses both emerge in late seventeenth-century England, and they conquer the world together. Surely this suggests an affinity that ought to trouble those who advocate one but castigate the other? The interviews now published as The Science of Language and How the World Works show that this paradox is at least playing on Chomsky’s mind. The conversations range promiscuously, and although one book is largely concerned with linguistics while the other is mainly political, Chomsky seems happier than usual to discuss the mutual implications of his two fields of interest.

I’ve been something on a William Blake kick since I’ve started reading his biography by Ackroyd. Hanging out with William Blake has been a pretty awesome experience, as he gives some of my anxieties and ideas more form. He’s what I like to consider a memetic ancestor, he’s the figure that stands at the crux of stuff that has affected my life. Without William Blake there would be no Allen Ginsberg, no William S. Burroughs, no Mage: the Ascension, no Doors, no nothing. When I ever get around to setting up that Voodoo Ancestor Altar, I may even set up a place for Memetic Ancestors like William Blake. I’m certain he’s somekind of Saint, and that if I were to contact him with spiritualist techniques he would respond.

Anyways, I bring up William Blake now because my reading of his biography has brought up some interesting aspects when met with the above article. I’m sure you all know about Noam Chomsky, who’s a local demagogue of linguistics and rallier against the Capitalist Man. As you can see there is a problem in his thinking that brings up a problem. Chomsky is a scientist, using scientific principles on the subject of language, and thus he is blind to the affect science has had in the creation of the system he now fights against. While he is a child of Newton, as the early post brings up, he fails to see that the mechanical nature of the Industrial-Scientific World has helped create the Rex Mundi that is capitalism.

Is it wrong to assume that Capital is an evil spirit? A Self-directing entity that has gained incredible control over our area of the universe? The idea dosen’t really seem so outrageous to me. I’m an aspiring magician, and as such I will have to deal with many things that I can’t actually perceive, at least not right now. This is a problem for the Newtonian Chomsky however.

This Chomsky cannot do. The logical conclusion of his political commentary is that capital acts as an independent agent, insinuating itself into the human mind and systematically perverting it. But this is incompatible with his scientific assumption that the mind is merely an “emergent property” of the physical brain. As Chomsky himself reminds us, the idea that human beings are purely physical entities, devoid of discarnate qualities such as mind, spirit or soul (or indeed ideas), has become plausible only over the past three centuries. Thomas Kuhn refers to this as a “paradigm shift”, but Chomsky rejects the concept because it implies that scientific truth is historically relative. For him, the Galilean revolution of the seventeenth century was simply an unprecedented, almost miraculous leap forward, and he sees it as his task to extend this revolution to areas, such as linguistics, in which its impact has been delayed. He does not attempt to explain why it occurred in the first place.

This ultimately leads to the problem that humans are objects, which is ironic since under this time money has become a spiritual entity. Money is without body, yet it affects us all. In some respects, pre-Enlightenment folks may have not been wrong in saying that the world will end. It already has. The Great Beast has taken it’s form as Capitol, and now has much more influence then any religious body.

The problem, as the article points out, is that we have become objects to be sold on the open market. We have forgotten that we have souls. It is time that we start to remember that we have them. Only when we take back our spirits from the machine of capitalism, or as Blake put it “these dark Satanic mills,” will we trulley be free.

So I have recently finished watching “The Wire,” and am currently filled with a lot of complex emotions. Describing how emotions work for me is a bit hard, but I think jealousy and righteous anger seem to be the ones that come up. Also a bit of shame, but that fits into the righteous anger.

I’m jealous because “The Wire,” is a really good show. I don’t really want to be one of those guys who’s all “Oh my God, the Wire is the best show ever,” because that kind of goes without saying by now. Seriously, go watch “The Wire.” The fact that I am jealous is because part of me wants to write something like “The Wire.” I want to go deep into the problems of our times and come out with a great novel, maybe not a television show because I’m afraid to get into the television business, but I appreciate what David Simon has done. Technically I wouldn’t write a straight up realist police/crime drama, because most of my writing tends towards a mix of the Beats and Magic Realism, but “The Wire” gets to a level of humanity that should be the goal of any author.

This also fits into the righteous anger, because “The Wire” is really good at looking at some of the not nicer bits of humanity, specifically the great social problems of the United States. As much as I like to pound the maple leaf, I realize that this is also a problem with Canada, in as so much as we are basically another of America’s bitches in the prison that is Earth. But we’re not talking about international relationships, we’re talking about The Wire. It piles up this entire mess of greed and bureaucracy, eventually showing the sheer amorality of the system and leaves us thinking what we’re supposed to do with all this. It dosen’t give any easy answers, particularly since the two cases where someone tries to fuck the system in the show are basically illegal (No spoilers). For me, this kind of leaves me with an after-taste of “What the fuck, people, why are you being assholes?” which is usually something I try to avoid because I have yet to figure out how to manage my anger in a constructive way. That said, I think that the basic logic behind my anger is justified, and The Wire is pretty good at bringing it out in a way that I don’t feel is cheap.

And finally, where does shame come into this? Well, it comes from the fact that I feel I am something of a problem. While watching the bonus features, I watched a few things on the newspaper business and how that’s been failing due to the Internet. Apparently this has lead to the whole problem of news being available for free, so now the newspapers have to compete against people on the Internet. To an extent, people like me. I’m probably not completely at fault since I am very specific, but David Simon does have some good points. I don’t really do journalism, I just comment on other bits of journalism, which I in turn get from other people commenting on someone else’s real journalism. This comes up against the creation of works such as “The Wire,” which show a great sweeping view of the world, where as I rarely give much detail to my own reports beyond my own opinions. I am hiding in my own mind, and to some extent this bothers me.

I have had more time to read about the whole eBay banning occult things, and I may have been mistaken. In my rage, which probably hade nothing to do with the occult items, I got carried away and did not do much research. eBay will continue to sell magic items (tarot cards, occult books), but actual services (tarot readings, psychic attacks on rival businessmen, fertility spells for the barren). There are still problems with this ban, which is dealt with in the Wild Hunt article below. I just felt it was best to alert you all to the current events.